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Blood Meridian

from Blood Meridian by damezumari

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about

so this song is very similar in theme to ‘victory’ and it mainly ruminates on the dangers of inattention and willful ignorance of the consequences of one’s actions, removed from sight by barriers of geography, time, or just the highly staged and manicured storefronts of commerce. but I pulled some of the imagery from the book, Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy, which is about a war party of sorts that makes its way through the southwest of the US and the northwest of Mexico more or less indiscriminately killing along the way. this journey is, as I read it, an analogue for the notion of Manifest Destiny, and along the way a character named the ‘Judge’ sermonizes on the need of a ‘man’ to estimate and measure his worth through the mechanisms of risk and danger. In other words, by putting one’s self on the line in a battle, by continually risking one’s life against a reward of equal or greater value (the lives of others, many others in this case), the gambler is left with a feeling of validation through victory, through survival – this is a close analogue of the meritocratic notions of conservatives in American politics. It is also a manifestation of certain ancient atavistic instincts in man’s pre-civilized evolutionary history. though we as a society often proceed blindly without consideration of our effect on other people and on our environment, our ignorance of those effects does not make them any less real. the history of this continent and its exploration and domination by Europeans provides a great lesson in this regard. A new world was for them little more than a new frontier to be tamed, not a new home to share and build. I personally believe in an approach to life that errs on the side of caution and forethought in all things. I know these aren’t necessarily your typical song-topics, but I think they apply to so many situations in so many diverse facets of life that they provide a salient and sufficient replacement for the usual romantic fare in song lyrics (and good riddance, I might add).

lyrics

A desert empty, hard, and mute some implied and maligning agent mere dust, soft clay, of eroding tides unsettling account, no balance to come in the pall of mistakes past

who are you to ignore the obvious effects of your actions? and ask the world to bend to your ignorance of other ends more exists without than is known within or spoken invisible but no less real, though forgotten our wills have mass

an epidemic of inattention content with meaningless negligence on a curved path, tethered and constrained wrought between collisions and propelled to escape

but man himself is a force of nature which counters all others and conquers so as to undo itself in its wake, risk values all reward so-called providence designs all consequence

the game plays itself
so it goes, and so it went
so it goes, and so it will, at the end
so it goes, and so it will, so it went, at the end, as it always would

the measure of man isn’t that which he hazards no hope in abandoning to shaping molding chance this alien land holds scars of man’s conversion does it manifest our victory, our destiny, or our barbarity?

credits

from Blood Meridian, released October 1, 2009
stephen paul wrote most of these riffs, though eric modified many of them
art by jared

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damezumari Tulsa, Oklahoma

the band - started march 2003, from tulsa,OK. and san diego, ca
in its last recorded form:
craig maricle - drums
chris skillern - bass, voice
stephen paul - guitar, voice
eric titterud - guitar, voice
the band has previously included:
doug johnston (drums) and daniel sutliff (bass), who both played on the first three demos,
blake foster (drums), and aaron thornhill (bass) and mike laughlin (drums) ... more

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